Treasures!

Yesterday, I came home from some errand-running to find a TREASURE BOX waiting for me on the deck!! It was made of brown cardboard and lovingly sent from my mother and my closet :).

(The back story here, just fyi, is that my bedroom at my parent's house is being usurped for the indeterminable future and all of my things are being moved out (thankfully not thrown out, at least!) and taken down to make room for said usurpers. Don't ask me about that, I don't want to talk about it.)

Anyway, I opened the box to find all sorts of wonderful, heartwarming, nostalgic things!! Among them were the swim-fin key chains that hung from my backpack in high school, my competitor's deck pass for the state swim meet during sophmore year, my young womanhood recognition medallion, and various and sundry other things that put a smile on my face.

But what put the biggest smile on my face was this:



My three and four year old journal!! When I was little, I would sit down every week, usually with my dad, and dictate to him what I wanted to go in my journal for that week. Just to share some of my joy with you, this is what I wrote almost exactly 23 years ago:

January 31, 1988

I did quite a bit of swingset playing on this week, and Daddy pushed me really high--clear up into the tangerine branches! Sometimes I call them "reenies." I like to eat them. So does Sarah.

Friday night we got to go watch Daddy play basketball at the Stake Center. We got to have pizza for supper after the game.

I got my report card from pre school this week. Mrs. Nichol said I was really doing well in lots of things. I am starting to learn how to write my name. I would like to learn how.

:) This may seem ordinary, but I can't begin to describe how happy this makes me! It is truly a treasure!

Today Is A Popcorn Day

It is.

When I lived in Austin, I had the best teaching colleagues I could have ever hoped for. We understood each other and we understood that some days...well, some days are popcorn days. Each of us kept a stash of boy scout microwave popcorn in our classrooms. On "those days" we would all find our way to one of our respective classrooms at the end of the day. We would pop some popcorn, shut the door, and not open it for anything or anyone until we'd had some popcorn and some peace.

Snow Day, Part 4: Let's go for a walk.

First off, I have mixed feelings about today's snow day:
1. Mmm, sleeping in is nice :)
2. Yes! another 4 day week!
3. Do I really have to re-write my lesson plans again?!
4. It's SO pretty oustide!
5. My snow shovel is getting tired of shoveling, (not to mention its wielder...).
6. 4 feet of snow in the past 2ish weeks?! Seriously?!
7. At least it didn't come all at once.
8. Mmm, sleeping in is nice :)

That said, after my buddies snow shovel, snow blower, and I finished clearing snow, I strapped on my snow shoes and went for a walk! I brought 4 foot tall snow shovel with me for reference. Well, that was the original idea anyway. He ended up serving as a walking stick, mostly.

BEHOLD! Our beautiful snowy woods! Notice that the giant rock is completely buried!

Now, just for reference, here we have the same-ish scene (viewed from the bedroom) in summer:

Now in the summer, I can pretty easily ride the lawn mower under the lowest branch of the peach tree (it's the one on the left).


Not so, right now. Even wearing my snow shoes the snow still was deeper than my knees!

If this keeps up, the whole house might disappear under the snow. (Exterior improvements to happen if summer ever gets here).


The snow makes our new siding and paint on the front look extra nice :)

If you look closely you can see a kitty cat peering out, wondering what the heck I am doing.

This is what it looks like when you leave your snow shovel walking stick somewhere and you fall down wearing snow shoes in deep snow:
Oops. It may or may not have taken me a full two minutes to get back on my feet.

Finally, I decided to have pity on the poor UPS guy who tends to make semi-regular stops at our house. I dug him a channel through the giant wall of plowed snow from the road.
Husband keeps saying he is going to train the kitties to tunnel holes in the snow for us, but I'm not seeing it.

Snow Day!

Monday evening, on my way home from work, I received a pleasant, although not altogether surprising phone call. This gist of it went something like this: "Due to the forecasted inclement weather, district employees should not report to work tomorrow." I spoke a cheery thank-you to the automated voice on the other end of the phone, and as I was pulling into my driveway, the little white flakes of "inclement weather began to drift down from the clouds. After a leisurely sleep in, my first glance out of my window revealed this:



Hooray!! A breathtakingly beautiful foot or more of snow, and still falling steadily! After taking a few moments to appreciate the beauty, my feet reminded me how cold they were, so I went off in search of my slippers. With my feet warm again, I took advantage of the long morning to make some french toast and eat it by the fire already already crackling in the fireplace. Bryant did have any. He wanted cereal instead. (Might that be because he made out of bed about an hour before me and didn't want to wait around for some breakfast? Possibly. Probably. Oh well. I ate his piece for him.)

Later on, in the spirit of being helpful and productive (and warm...) I decided to put on my boots and coat, take up my shovel, and dig out the wood pile. Now, this was to be no easy feat, as I discovered when I opened the door to find snow piled up to my knees (and still snowing)! Nonetheless, I accomplished my task, but discovered to my great surprise, that my thoughts were not full of mutterings and complaints surrounding my least favorite task, but rather, full of joy in my productivity and appreciation for the beauty and the muffled, peaceful silence that only snow seems to be able to produce.

So I thought "well, maybe I'll just shovel the walkway and deck while I've got my shovel going here..." and went to town on the three foot drift covering the steps. Child's play. When I made it to the top of the deck, Mr. Flowerpot Frog in his own snowstorm headdress, austerely agreed:

"Well done. Now go, thou and plow the driveway"

Well, since you asked nicely...

Somewhere in the driveway plowing process (probably around the time I realized that my hair was frozen and that I couldn't feel my rear end), that nice, serene snowfall mindset got lost. But I had come so far, and the snow had almost stopped, so I "plowed on through" (ha haaa...) to the finish. This is what I looked like 5 minutes after coming inside:

See? I told you my hair was frozen. I think yesterday's mascara adds a nice touch as well.

I spent the rest of my snow day as one should spend a snow day, that is to say, thawing my frozen cheeks (both sets) by the fire and reading a fantastically pointless book.